LED Street Lights Come to Arlington.

Street lighting is one of Arlington’s biggest utility costs.  The Town took steps six years ago to reduce this expense by installing high pressure sodium streetlights (HPS).  HPS shrank the annual street lighting bill by $90,000 and cut energy consumption in half, from 2.4 million kWh to 1.2 million kWh.  Today, LED technology offers additional opportunities for savings and improved safety. Compared to HPS streetlights, LED’s are twice as energy efficient and provide a 300% improvement in color rendering, better overall distribution of light, and last twice as long.  The longer-lasting LED’s also reduce maintenance costs.

As part of its commitment to being a Massachusetts Green Community, the Town is continually working to reduce energy consumption and costs while increasing energy efficiency.  As part of this effort, the Town is replacing its current High Pressure Sodium (HPS) streetlights with Light Emitting Diode (LED) streetlight technology.  Over time, this upgrade will reduce the Town’s annual street lighting costs in half, from $300,000 to $150,000.

The first phase of the Town’s LED streetlight conversion program has begun. This first phase of the program will replace about a third of the Town’s current High Pressure Sodium (HPS) streetlights with  Light Emitting Diode (LED) lights, starting on the east side of Town progressing west. During the conversion residents may notice crews working to install the lights.  It is not anticipated that the work crews will cause any need for traffic re-routing or detours.  Residents will also notice that LED streetlights are white in color, as opposed to the yellowish tone of the current streetlights.

A number of factors have helped make this project feasible including the Town’s recent “Green Communities” designation and grant award toward streetlight upgrades ($160,000), NSTAR now providing incentives for communities to make the switch ($70,000), and the cost of LED streetlights having dropped dramatically. These factors will be leveraged with a prior Town Meeting appropriation of $100,000 toward this phase of the project.  Further grant funding will be sought for the remaining streetlight replacements, as well as the potential of using energy savings from the upgrade to pay for further installations.

Source: www.arlingtonma.gov/energy.